Golden Boy Promotions continues to violate eyeballs across America with its televised insults, Fight Night Club and Solo Boxeo. Still, every time you turn around, some expert or other gauges the health of the boxing industry by the number of televised mismatches one can stumble upon on any given night with the help of a remote control and a bottle of Old Smuggler. ?Check your local listings? is as important to these authorities as ?Hail Marys? are to Catholics. Breathless write-ups, exclamation points, and expert analysis, however, are at odds with one simple fact: these cards are atrocious.
Just how bad is Fight Night Club? So bad, it cannot even be bothered to follow commission regulations. A cursory look at the last abomination staged at the Nokia Theater in June reveals that the card had only 24 scheduled rounds. The California State Athletic Commission clearly states that a minimum of 26 rounds is required to stage a boxing card:
?Clubs shall not schedule less than 26 rounds of boxing, nor more than 40 rounds, except with the approval of the commission for any one program. A standby bout shall be provided in the event an arranged card breaks down, and if it is necessary to put on another bout in order to meet the minimum requirement.?
Anyone want to bet there was no special approval granted for Fight Night Club? An e-mail sent to the CSAC, not surprisingly, received no reply. After all, the California State Athletic Commission did not earn its reputation as kings of the clusterfuck for nothing. Even the challenged Michigan State Unarmed Combat Commission responds to e-mails quickly. (Maybe the CSAC will respond to this post once it hits their in-box.) The Cruelest Sport wonders if the folks who actually pay for tickets to these sorry events are even aware that they are being short changed by more than just the poor quality of so-called fights. For anywhere from $63 to $253 you can watch a maximum of 72 minutes of prizefighting parodies. The last card, featuring the likes of Rodrigo Aranda, 8-12-2, Jaime Orrantia, 13-27-5, and Ernesto Zavala, 21-4, but with only one fight since 2005 and 16 years older than his opponent, Jesse Vargas, lasted less than 42 minutes. Next time, maybe you should log onto the Better Business Bureau or RipoffReport.com instead of Ticketmaster.
The argument, made by the usual suspects, that this series is about prospects and clubfights is made by folks who have probably never been to a clubfight and for whom ?prospects? come along every fifteen minutes or so. In addition, whenever GBP needs to get some work in for its patchwork stable, they abandon their so-called ?prospect? mission and throw in a headliner to feast on a no-hoper; for example, Victor Ortiz-Hector Alatorre (16-8), Abner Mares-Felipe Almanza (17-15-4), and 4-time ?world? title challenger Jose Navarro against Benjie Garcia (14-14-3).
Thoughtless, cynical, and completely at odds with the nature of competition, Fight Night Club is the kind of television viewing that leaves you longing for test patterns. Tuning into Fight Night Club is like renting the ?Sound of Music? from Netflix only to receive ?The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? in the mail. A look at all the bouts GBP has aired on Telefutura, Fox, and ESPN2 this year reveals that the favorite?a GBP fighter?has won 100% of the main events and semis. One hundred percent. Bouts are no longer fixed in smoky back rooms, but right in front of us in the form of set-ups where the opponent has, literally, zero chance of winning. Predetermined contests are not sporting events, of course, but why let that get in the way?
Golden Boy fares no better with its Solo Boxeo series, which used to be good fun when Top Rank ran it. But saying that, of course, would curl sanctimonious ponytails across cyberspace. Solo Boxeo is the number one supplier of cadavers on television, beating episodes of ?Autopsy? or ?CSI? by a country mile. Since its glorious return in late April, Solo Boxeo has featured the following juicy matchups: Robert Guerrero-Robert David Arietta (35-15-4); Sharif Bogere-Ilidio Julio (40-18-1, 39 years old and in the midst of a 5-12 streak); Pablo Cesar Cano-Oscar Leon (28-12, 36 years old and 1-9 in his last 10 bouts); Eric Molina-Chris Thomas (17-11-2, 38 years old and 1-8-1 over his last 10). These are squash matches, pure and simple, almost all of them blowouts, and the kind of bouts that can be videotaped and sent to the American Medical Association as evidence of why boxing ought to be banned. Most of these set-ups should have taken place at the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan with ceremonial daggers at hand.
When the ?Boxing Renaissance? crew turned cartwheels over the ?return of Telefutura,? they must have known what they would get given the GBP track record: wholesale bloodshed. But does that stop the cheerleading machine known as the boxing press from gushing about it? Of course not.
For those who actually view these ritual sacrifices on a regular basis, what can be said, except, maybe, enjoy your slaughter?
